A Week on the Mississippi Part 1

Monday November 14

After spending the weekend with old friends in St. Louis we hit the river again Monday morning.  McKinney drove us down to our put in and helped us unload and then we were off, on the water at 10:30 am. The day would result in us spending 5 hours on the water beating our way through a still 16-35 mph head wind and dodging the ample barge traffic as we progressed 25 miles through commercial St. Louis.  When it comes to canoes on big, open water wind is the greatest obstacle.  Even a tailwind can be stressful but headwinds and sidewinds will turn a pleasant activity into a fight.  Throw in steady barge traffic and you're pretty much in a miserable situation. 

To make matters worse we hadn't eaten that morning while focused on getting back on the water.  Then between the wind and the barges which requires the utmost physical and mental concentration we never stopped once on the water.  Paddling for 5 hours on a stomach full of coffee and little else is never a good idea and we hit camp with a hunger.  For dinner we cooked up what we like to call the Denny's scramble which consists of potatoes, green peppers, hot peppers, onion, and whatever meat we happen to have on hand (Jimmy Dean Hot Sausage) thrown together in a skillet and fried. Wrap that in a tortilla with Tapatio hot sauce and some pepper and you have one delicious dinner. 

I figured out while we were on the lakes that we eat somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 calories a day (not including beer).  Even with all those calories we have been losing weight but gaining upper body strength.  At the same time our legs have been shriveling up into nothing due to 7-10 hours a day of sitting in a canoe and the other hours of the day sitting in camp or sleeping.  Looking forward to a little hiking and biking when all this is over but gonna have to take things slow for sure. 

Tuesday November 15, 2011

Started the morning with a couple cups of coffee, bacon, eggs, and some rodent chewed bread (gotta contain the baked goods better).  For most of the trip we had been limiting ourselves to one cup of coffee in the morning but recently have often been indulging in a second cup.  It was as a time saving device that was primarily for the lakes where we were making tops of 3 mph. 

We pushed off into a headwind but only about half as strong as Monday's.  It was supposed to become sunny but it stayed overcast and cool all day.  While paddling we were passed by 11 working tugs pushing between 1 and 24 barges.  Traffic is way busier here than on the Missouri where we only saw a few tugs during the entire 730 miles of channelized, commercial river.  We're pretty sure this was because of the summer flooding.  The river was flooded for 3-4 months with businesses closed and often flooded out, and thousands of homes flooded many of which we saw in various stages of wrecked along the bank.  The river destroyed the Army Corps of Engineers efforts at controlling it and every tug we saw was an Army Corps tug working to rechannelize the Missouri.  My guess is it's closed off to commercial traffic and will be for quite awhile. 

In the late afternoon, just as we were looking for a campsite we came around a bend to a huge sand and gravel operation that sprawled for miles, followed by a coal operation, and then a ferry.  We had to paddle for another hour and into darkness to get passed it all and out of earshot.  Paddling at night on the Mississippi is not anywhere near as safe or pleasurable as on the Missouri.  Too much barge traffic and too many partipartially submerged rock walls used to control the flow of the river. As a result we were looking hard for a place to pull over and nearly ran into one of those walls. Acrtually scraped the bottom of the Betty B before we realized it was there.

In the distance we saw a beach and headed for it. As we approached it looked like a perfect spot. Big, flat, and sheltered from the wind by large trees. It was unfortunately already taken by a group of hunters who had tents set up and a pontoon boat tied off on shore. We proceeded on into the night. About a half mile down we found another sandbar on the same side of the river as the hunters and took it. Set up camp, at a spaghetti dinner and crawled into our tents shortly before 8 pm exhausted having paddled 45 miles through the day.

Wednesday November 16

Forecast was for N winds at 8 mph with gusts of 15 but instead we got East winds with gusts of more than 15. Result was instead of the tailwinds we were hoping for we were stuck with side winds all day long. Made good miles but they were a hard fought and exhausting 35 miles.

We stopped in Chester, Il the home of Popeye to take a look around. We were hoping to find a little store to pick up a few things but it seems all the stores have moved out to the highway. A few little shops downtown but nothing we were looking for. Though we did eat lunch at a little diner with a lunch special consisting of homemade turkey and dressing with mashed potatoes and gravy. Delicious!

We camped in a little cove on the outside of a bend directly in the commercial lanes and between two navigation markers. Barge traffic was going directly by us and it was a little eery because as they came into the bend it looked like they were coming straight for us. To navigate at night the barges use spotlights and go from navigation marker to navigation marker. Since we were in between two of them we kept getting lit up by the spotlights as the tug captain searched the bank for the markers

The River Dance